Christopher McQuarrie is Adapting Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse

Jack Ryan isn’t the only recurring hero in Tom Clancy’s series of techno thriller novels. The other guy who pops up regularly is one John Clark, a former Navy SEAL turned CIA black ops operator, who often worked with Ryan in the Clancy novels. Now Paramount thinks it’s high time Clark got his own movie.

The studio is close to a deal with Christopher McQuarrie to adapt the Clancy novel “Without Remorse”, which traces Clark’s origins during and after the Vietnam War, and before he eventually joined the CIA. Clark, like Ryan, has aged quite a bit in the books, but of course like the upcoming “Jack Ryan” reboot, it’s almost a certainly McQuarrie will be writing about the adventures of a much younger John Clark to keep it in line with the new Jack Ryan.

Just as Ryan has been played by multiple actors in the movies, this will also be the third time around for Clark, who was originally played by Willem Dafoe in “Clear and Present Danger”, before getting de-aged (along with Ryan) by Liev Schreiber in “The Sum of All Fears”.

Paramount is high on McQuarrie, who recently adapted the Lee Child novel “One Shot” for them into the movie “Jack Reacher” with Tom Cruise. Not only is McQuarrie adapting “Without Remorse”, but it’s entirely possible he might also direct as well.

The studio is also currently working on the Jack Ryan reboot with Chris Pine in the lead. Earlier today, we reported that Kevin Costner was being courted to play Ryan’s mentor in the reboot, and it’s expected that the same character (either played by Costner or someone else) will cross over to “Without Remorse” when it’s time to recruit John Clark into the CIA. I guess you can say Paramount, like Marvel, is setting up their own “Tom Clancy Universe”.